Deterring the terrorist: A psychological evaluation of different strategies for deterring terrorism

This article seeks to evaluate different anti‐terrorism strategies from a psychological perspective. Two major deterrent strategies are identified: the Denial Strategy and the Reintegrative Strategy. It is the contention of this article that both these strategies may be thought of as practical applications of different theories of crime deterrence. The Denial Strategy effectively mirrors early theories of crime deterrence, which concentrate on minimising the benefits, and increasing the costs, of crime through legal sanctions. By way of contrast, the Reintegrative Punishment Strategy represents a modern and more sophisticated theory of deterrence, which recognises the cost of non‐legal sanctions to the terrorist and the need to reintegrate the terrorist back into society. This article discusses the relative psychological merits of both these strategies, focusing on the normal psychology of the terrorist. In the course of this examination two major defects of the Denial Strategy are established and it is argued that the Reintegrative Punishment Strategy of deterring terrorism has greater psychological validity because it confronts the issues of the alienation and reintegration of the terrorist. These findings highlight the dangers of policy‐makers neglecting the psychology of the terrorist.     

The next generation of court-mandated domestic violence treatment: a comparison study of batterer intervention and restorative justice programs

Objectives

The most common approach to treatment of domestic violence crimes in the United States is the mandated group-based Batterer Intervention Program (BIP). Several alternative treatment approaches have been developed over the years, including a restorative justice-based treatment program for domestic violence offenders called Circles of Peace (CP). This study compared a CP program administered in Arizona with a local BIP program, in controlled settings.

Methods

This study involved a randomized controlled trial with 152 domestic violence cases randomly assigned to either BIP or CP between September 2005 and March 2007. Independent sample t tests were used to measure treatment outcomes post-random assignment, in terms of both domestic violence and non-domestic violence re-arrest rates during four follow-up periods (6, 12, 18, and 24 months).

Results

CP participants experienced less recidivism than BIP during all follow-up comparisons. However, statistically significant differences were detected only for the 6-month (p?<?.1) and the 12-month (p?<?.05) follow-up comparisons for non-domestic violence re-arrests, and no statistically significant differences were detected for the domestic violence re-arrests.

Conclusions

The findings are generally statistically non-significant at .05. While these results do not suggest a change in policy from BIP to CP for domestic violence crimes, it does dispel the popular belief that restorative justice cannot be used to treat domestic violence criminal activity, in that CP does no worse than the traditional batterer intervention program. Given the low statistical power and high attrition rates, more research is necessary to test CP and restorative justice treatment generally in court-mandated domestic violence cases in order to understand the treatment impact on both domestic violence and non-domestic violence offenders.     

To Russia and back again: Intellectuals in postwar France

Political Traditions in Modern France. By SUDHIR HAZAREESINGH. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Pp.viii+355, £35 (hardback); £12.95 (paperback) ISBN 0–19–878074–5 and 0–19–878075–2.

Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944–1956. By TONY JUDT. Berkeley/ Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1992. Pp.348. £24. ISBN 0–520–0792.

Arguing Revolution: The Intellectual Left in Postwar France. By SUNIL KHILNANI. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993. Pp.viii+262. £19.95 (hardback), ISBN 0–300–05745–8.

Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization. By RICHARD KUISEL. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1993. Pp.xiii+296. £20. ISBN 0–520–07962–0.

Extrême‐Occident: French Intellectuals and America. By JEAN‐PHILIPPE MATHY. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Pp.307, £13.50. ISBN 0–226–51064–6.

Face au scepticisme: Les Mutations du paysage intellectuel ou l'invention de I'intellectuel democratique. By OLIVIER MONGIN. Paris: Editions La Décou‐verte, 1994. Pp.400. FF180 (paperback). ISBN 9–782707–12308–4.

La Tribu des clercs: Les intellectuels sous la Ve République. By RÉMY RIEFFEL. Paris: Calmann‐Lévy, 1993. Pp.691. FF250 (paperback), ISBN 2–7021–2276–0.     

Screens in the sky: SAGE,surveillance, and the automation of perceptual,mnemonic, and epistemological labor

This essay investigates the centrality of the U.S. Military in the process of automating the labor of surveillance. The creation of Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), an anti-nuclear defense system developed in the 1950s, marked the computerization of the perceptual, mnemonic, and epistemological labor that is necessary for surveillance and is emblematic of screening technologies. The essay situates SAGE in a long history of military surveillance that depended upon media technologies. Building upon the work of Michel Foucault and Freidrich Kittler, it is argued that media are essential for understanding how surveillance is problematized for security.     

The functioning and regulation of escrow accounts

Abstract

About 40 million Americans have mortgages serviced by escrow accounts. Yet escrow accounts are rarely covered by an explicit agreement between borrower and lender and are often poorly understood. As a result, escrow accounts have become the subject of growing controversy. Federal regulation of escrow accounts has become increasingly detailed and intrusive during the past two decades, and the subject is under almost continuous regulatory review. In the 1990s, the attorneys general of at least 10 states have sued large escrow account servicers over administration of accounts.

The purposes of this article are to explain briefly how escrow accounts work, benefit relevant parties, and are regulated by federal agencies, and to evaluate alternative regulatory programs. Most of the legitimate social goals of federal regulation could be achieved by requiring an explicit escrow agreement at the time of closing on a mortgage. A second‐best requirement would be that interest be paid on escrow balances.     

The bounds of smart decline: a foundational theory for planning shrinking cities

Economic decline has led to a new wave of population decline throughout the US, meaning more and more cities are shrinking. Growing interest in using smart decline principles to respond to shrinkage has been met with controversy in cities such as Detroit and Cleveland. This paper advances a foundational theory of smart decline that takes as its starting point discussions of ethics, equity, and social justice in the planning and political theory literature, but is well grounded in observations of successful smart decline practice.     

The Geopolitics of James Bond

This article considers the politics of James Bond in order to throw light on the interaction of 'real' geopolitics and literary and cinematic representations. The Bond literature provides many opportunities for considering aspects of the popular perception of the worlds of intelligence, including, for example, the stress on covert operations and on human intelligence rather than on signals operations. The stories can also be used to consider changing images of Britain, the United States and the world, and can at times be seen as efforts to create an impression of the normality of British imperial rule and Empire. Echoes of Anglo-American competition and tension are also to be found in the Bond literature. An important, albeit concealed, theme is Britain's diminished political and military presence in Cold War confrontations and a corresponding need to adapt to the United States. Cinematic representations of Bond have presented the world with an image of global struggle through Western eyes, having depicted shifts in the Cold War and addressing themes such as the space race, nuclear confrontation and drugs.     

Signals Intelligence and the Coder Special Branch of the Royal Navy in the 1950s

The Coder (Special) Branch was created to meet the needs of the Navy in gathering Russian language intelligence in the early years of the Cold War. It also supported a national signals intelligence effort coordinated by GCHQ. The article explores our recruitment, brief cryptography training, lengthy training in the Russian language, radio training, and our work in monitoring radio traffic at the radio stations set up in north Germany, first at Cuxhaven, later at Kiel. It concludes with a brief discussion of theIsis case at the central criminal court in London which arose from one of the first unauthorized discussions of these sorts of activities. This case ended with the successful prosecution of two former Coders for breaching the Official Secrets Act.